Mo Williams: Jazzman Once More + Kevin O’Connor’s Views on Social Media

**On where his “toughness” comes from: I think it just come from the way I was raised. I think the way you is raised is who you are. I didn’t come from the greatest of situations, but one thing about it, I wasn’t in the worst either. And I watched my parents battle, work night shifts, work two jobs, and that’s toughness. That’s toughness.

When I’m going to school and my dad just getting home from work, my mom going to work, my mom get off work, my dad going back, that’s something. And I think it all carries over from your parents, and I was fortunate enough to have both parents in my life. And my dad’s very demanding, and I think that’s where I get it from.

**On how playing for Jerry Sloan honed that toughness: I already had [toughness] in me, and I say it to this day. I couldn’t have went to a better place. Couldn’t’ve went to a better place. After you go to other organizations, you really appreciate this organization…the way Jerry approached things. Everybody know Jerry. He’s very fair. You play hard, he will reward you. And that’s one thing he taught me. You play hard, you’ll play. And when I played hard, I played. And I always remember that.

**On standing up for teammates in the event of wet willies and such: When a guy hits the floor, I don’t care who hits the floor, somebody needs to run over and pick him up. It shouldn’t be told to you, that’s something that should be done. If a teammate is in an altercation, everybody on the floor, not the bench, everybody on the floor need to go [remedy] that situation. Not fight, but we need to be beside our teammates, making sure nothing happen, and protect him. Make sure he don’t do anything, ’cause we gonna need people in the game.

Not saying everybody go get kicked out, but that’s a form of togetherness. That lets you know that, you know what, we here. If you wanna play like that, if you wanna be dirty, you gonna have to be dirty to all five of us on the court. That’s a tone that you want to set, because if you have that tone, if you have that makeup on your team, those things won’t happen. Those players wouldn’t do that. So that won’t even happen. If you know a dog gon bite you already, you won’t go in the pen with him.

**On Al Jefferson: I be seeing a lot of Al in the next few weeks. Me and Al got our camp back home, and then me and Al open camp together. Every year, we both have our individual pre-camps that we do [in] the communities that we grew up in, and then we do an elite camp together where we take the top 12 players, boys and girls, in the state and we do a two-day camp with them.

**Do you see yourself finishing your career here? That’s the goal. That’s the goal. Absolutely.

Kevin O’ Connor: That’s ours too.

**On different styles of point guards: Everybody has their own talent, and you shouldn’t have to change the way you play to appease anybody.* They know my strengths. I’m very, very, very comfortable in my own skin…I am what I am, and Imma continue to get better in the areas that I’m not great at. I’m always getting better.

* Found this interesting, because this is pretty much what Devin Harris had to/was asked to do last season.

**On having played different roles in his career: In Cleveland, I had the ball in my hands a lot. I think that’s the guy I’ll be here, more so than last year…When I went to Milwaukee, I was a point guard. That’s all I played. I distributed a lot; I didn’t really score that much. And then all of a sudden T.J. Ford came back from injury–he missed a whole year–and then I came off the bench my third year…and I was strictly a scorer [like] I was last year, but just better…

And my fourth year, fifth year, sixth year, seventh year, eighth year, that was my starting years where I was a point guard. And when I got to L.A., obviously the situation changed. So I’m able to adjust; I was kind of comfortable with that. I wasn’t happy about it, but I was comfortable with whatever I needed to do, just the approach I took my third year when T.J. got the starting job, I took the approach of “whatever it takes.”

If I gotta play small forward, if I gotta play power forward, I want to be on the floor. Imma do whatever it takes. If you want me to just be a scorer, that’s my role? That’s my role.

**On his kids (four and one on the way) and #16: One thing about my kids, they’re probably more basketball-educated than a lot of adults, and that’s the honest truth. My kids know every player in the NBA, what team they on, when they get traded, who they got traded for. They fully aware of what team I’m on, they pick my jersey number, they picked #16.

Unintentional Dirty Quote Machines of the Night (UDQM)** Mo Williams: Some guys are kind of laidback and reserved. I’m not. I’m kind of a balls-to-the-wall, I’m going to go hard.** Mo Williams: If you wanna play like that, if you wanna be dirty, you gonna have to be dirty to all five of us on the court.

Kevin O’Connor**On Mo Williams: He’s in an opportunity where, when they, obviously [the Clippers] traded for Chris Paul, he became, you know, not the starter, and he wants to start somewhere, so, you know, that’s gonna be, he’s gonna be given an opp–a strong opportunity to do that here.

**On rule changes: Back when Oster was here, he could stand out on the wing offensively and he could play 3-on-3 on one side of the floor.

I just included this part because it’s funny KOC calls Greg Ostertag “Oster.”

**On Twitter: The last time I thought about tweeting was when I used to watch cartoons with Tweety Bird.

**On social media and blogs: The toughest thing is for guys that don’t have to, don’t have any accountability. We talk about it as players, and talk about it as, you know, my respon–my job and everything else is accountability. But it, it, it doesn’t seem to transcend into the, into the, what my wife says, ’cause I, is the “social media world.”

**On his wife and Mo Williams: This is the God’s honest truth and I’m not even gonna, I’m not even gonna get close to exaggerating. She said, “Is there free agents? Who are you talking about?” So we mention some names and talked about getting a guard. She said, “You know, you screwed up the last time. You gotta get Mo Williams.” … I’m not even paraphrasing. I believe that was a quote from her.

Well, the secret’s out. If you have draft/free agency/trade proposals you want the Jazz to act on, you have to go through Linda O’Connor.

**On Jazz players and social media: Here’s what we try and do…You sit there and you say, “…Would your mother like to see what you wrote?” And you know, they all, especially the younger players, they go, “Ooh.” You know, they smile at you a little bit, like, “What are you, crazy?” But at least, you know, you try and talk to them about making sure that they don’t do something on there as a joke, as anything else, that would be misconstrued.